Feature Spotlight: New UWA2, now powering the core of Netvibes.com

A lot of developers are using our UWA (Universal Web App API) to build simple web widgets. But did you know that the core of Netvibes.com–dashboards and apps–is now coded using UWA2, our latest version?

Since 2007, UWA has pioneered the concept of “write once, deploy everywhere” enabling developers to create simple universal web widgets that work on all browsers and desktops. Today, however, most people own and use multiple devices (laptop, smartphone, tablet), with different screen sizes and operating systems — and they expect robust, native app experiences across each device.

Enter the new UWA2. We’ve enhanced UWA2 internally to help our developers code the next generation of Netvibes.com to ensure that all our dashboards and apps work seamlessly across all devices and screensizes, and enable more robust app features (ie. touch, charting, analytics, security and much more). We also did it to save an enormous amount of time coding and updating different native apps across a growing number of devices and display sizes.

The end result? Now your dashboard and apps maintain one consistent User Experience (UX) across all your devices and display sizes — while still retaining crucial, native UI elements such as touch, navigation and preferences. We also used UWA2 to create all the Social Analytics apps in Netvibes Premium and complex apps that integrate secure enterprise systems for our clients–proving that universal apps are now also fully featured, robust apps. Today, many Fortune 500 companies, brands and agencies rely on UWA2 for multi-system app deployment and have reported time/cost savings of up to 70% vs. coding for and maintaining multiple platforms.

Now with UWA2, Code Once and Get:

Unified UX Across All Devices and Display Sizes – Now universal apps are fully optimized for virtually all screen sizes and devices (including iPads and Android tablets of all sizes, iOS/Android/Blackberry smartphones of all sizes, laptops, etc,). This means you can ensure a consistent, homogeneous UX across all devices and display sizes, while still retaining important native UI elements (such as touch interfaces and preference menus).

Automatic Updates Everywhere – In-app updates can be pushed to all users across all devices automatically, without the need for users to reinstall or hunt for manual updates.

Slimmer, Faster, More Robust apps – Universal apps are optimized to be even smaller and faster across different devices/screen sizes, while adding even more features–such as Highcharts, native menus, touch interfaces and more.

At last, a fully synced environment for your tablet, smartphone and computer! No compromises. At Netvibes, we couldn’t imagine letting one device not sync with the other or forcing you to have a different app experience on each sized screen. The new UWA2 is the only solution that let’s you code once and build apps that users can enjoy synchronously and seamlessly on all their current and future devices. This means you can spend more time creating the next killer feature on your app and/or produce more apps, instead of duplicating effort to support multiple platforms.

Want to learn more?Contact us for documentation and access to get started. Be sure to include some examples of what you’ve built before so we know you’re cool and not a spam robot! You can also take a look at our online UWA2 documentation here.

What’s happened to Net Vibes recently? Many of my widgets aren’t loading properly – if at all – and the Bookmarks widget has been converted from a conveniently dense list of URLs to a bloated version that doesn’t even remember previous viewing settings. Is it time to investigate iGoogle?